Fortt Knox

Oren Jacob saw Star Wars as a kid, and fell in love with the idea of bringing together technology and storytelling to create something entirely new.   Today, he’s the cofounder and CEO of PullString, a tech startup that teaches software how to have conversation. That could mean helping companies build an Alexa skill for Amazon’s Echo, or allowing Hello Barbie to talk. I caught up with Oren at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, where he spoke to leaders in the tech world about laying the groundwork for the future of voice interaction with computers.   He told me how his early fascination with Star Wars led him to an internship and first career at Pixar – before he decided to start his own thing.

Boutique treats and toys for dogs, it turns out, are a big business. Bark was co-founded by Matt Meeker, who's now its CEO. It's the seller of the subscription BarkBox. And it expects to do a quarter billion dollars in sales in 2018.  Americans spend about $70 billion a year on their pets; that’s part of the reason why General Mills just announced that it plans to pay $8 billion for pet food maker Blue Buffalo. And it’s part of the reason why I went to see Matt Meeker at Bark’s headquarters in New York City’s Chinatown, and learn how he saw this pet-pampering mega-trend coming six years ago.   When you’re pursuing a big idea, it’s important to keep refining it, and questioning your assumptions. That’s one of the things I took away from Matt’s story.

Frugality is baked into Rob Bernshteyn’s life experience. His family immigrated from Russia when he was a kid, and he used savings from a paper route to start a baseball card business … which helped pay for his college education. In his mid-30s, after an executive role at SuccessFactors, a tech company that went public, Rob’s entrepreneurial itch became overwhelming, and he used his modest IPO windfall to launch Coupa. Coupa’s mission? What else — help businesses save money through smart software.  Rob and I met at the Nasdaq Marketsite in Times Square to talk about how far Coupa’s come — it’s now a public company worth $2 billion — and how he got there.

Who doesn't like to eat? Maybe my seven-year-old … he'd rather talk at the table … but the rest of us, when we're hungry, want something right now, and something that's not going to induce a lot of guilt.  That, in a nutshell, is what has given birth to the fast casual movement over the past 20-plus years, and this week, I want you to join me for my conversation with the father of fast casual, Ron Shaich. Before there was Chipotle or Dig Inn, there was Panera Bread. Founded in Missouri in 1987, it now boasts more than two thousand locations. But Shaich, one of the founders, was selling cookies when he first got into the restaurant business. And he's got some insights to share about the journey. I got some time with Ron Shaich to talk technology, and quality, and wages, and more. We had half of this conversation on Fortt Knox Live, which you can catch Wednesdays at 2 pm, and see by the way on YouTube, and the CNBC app on Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV. Also, Ron and I kept the conversation going exclusively for t

Kaz Hirai has been the CEO of Sony for six years, and the company just announced that he'll be stepping aside and taking the title of Chairman in April.  That means he's been the CEO at Sony for much of time that I've been at CNBC. And in that span I've sat down with him most every year at the Consumer Electronics Show, a sprawling event in Las Vegas where the world's gadget giants gather every year.  Funny thing about Hirai – he stepped in to take the reins at Sony at a moment when the sky was falling in on the company. Apple's iPod and iTunes had snatched the digital music mantle away from the Japanese giant, and Samsung had seized Sony’s crown in TVs. Hirai leaves the CEO seat with the company pretty clearly better off than when he started.  I sat down as usual with Hirai at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, but this time, for both CNBC live and for the Fortt Knox podcast. We discussed Sony's latest products in phones, TV, and the return of that robot dog, Aibo – but I also talked to him about the

You don’t have to be playing the markets every day to know that stocks have been doing very well lately – and not just lately, for about nine years now.   That means you might be hearing a bit more about stock exchanges. Which brings us to my next guest. Adena Friedman is the first woman to lead a global stock exchange. She’s the CEO of Nasdaq, a job she’s held for a year.   To get there, she’s had to chart a path where there was none. For example, it meant choosing what was right for her family over what seemed like the more obvious career decision – and making it all work anyway.   I sat down with Adena Friedman – where else? At the Nasdaq, in New York’s Times Square. We talked about the roads not taken, and the new landscape for female entrepreneurs.

Imagine you've worked 23 years at a company, up to the top. You're being groomed to be the next CEO. And then the current CEO tells you – actually, he's not leaving anytime soon.  That's the position Al Kelly was in nine years ago at American Express. What happened next is a textbook case in how to handle career curveballs. Today Kelly is the CEO of Visa, and has great things to say about Ken Chenault, who’s retiring as CEO of American Express. Kelly also has great insight into what's happening in the world of money, from Bitcoin to Apple Pay.  I sat down with Kelly recently at the National Retail Federation conference in New York. Visa is a big company, worth more than a quarter trillion dollars, and its technology touches a staggering number of the payment transactions happening around the world. We talk about that – plus his career, which has taken him around some interesting corners. 

Daymond John grew up in Queens, New York. He wasn’t the best student – he would later be diagnosed with dyslexia – but he did have an eye for fashion and a talent for connecting with people.  Today, you’ll know him as one of the sharks on Shark Tank – a popular show on ABC and CNBC where entrepreneurs pitch their companies to a superstar panel of investors. That show is in its ninth season. Contestants want not just his money, but perhaps more important, Daymond John’s advice and unique connections.  Daymond John is also out with a new book this month, Rise and Grind, analyzing the key habits of successful people. He sat down with me to tell how he rose from sewing clothes in his mother’s house, to becoming an investor and TV star, and what he’s learning now. 

Whether it’s sports, college, or work at Goldman Sachs, Carter Reum and his brother Courtney have always had a tendency to do things together.   But it’s still pretty surprising that the two Midwestern guys managed to start a company together selling specialty alcohol … make millions of dollars … and now coach and invest in other entrepreneurs.   They’ve written a book about it – together, of course. Shortcut Your Startup is available January 16, and tries to turn conventional business advice on its head.   The Reum brothers don’t have a rags-to-riches story – they grew up outside of Chicago with a dad who was CEO of a manufacturing company and a Mom who had an MBA from Columbia. It is a story of teamwork, invention, and the guts to abandon what’s comfortable – budding careers in finance at Goldman Sachs – to pursue something potentially great. And I think that makes it a perfect story for the start of a new year.  

Success doesn’t usually come along a simple path, and that was definitely true for Shan Sinha. He was raised by a single mom in Texas, fell in love with technology, went to M.I.T., dropped out to do a startup, and …    Failed.    He went back to M.I.T. But of course that’s not the end of the story, or he wouldn’t be on this podcast. He got a job at Microsoft, left to start another company, and this time struck gold – by eventually selling that company to Google in 2010. Now he’s the founder and CEO of yet another business – Highfive, a video conferencing outfit that’s breaking new ground.      I don’t like straight lines. My career hasn’t traveled in one, and chances are, yours hasn’t either. So I love when I get to explore the stories of people who started out at a disadvantage. Or struck out a few times before hitting that home run. That, I can learn from.  

We used to buy things. Remember that? Hard drives, hit singles, our favorite movies. But for now at least, the hot trend is subscriptions.   Instead of buying hard drives, we subscribe to cloud storage from Amazon, Google, Microsoft or Dropbox. For music there’s Spotify. For movies there’s Netflix. And it seems a new subscription service is born every minute.   They say that during a gold rush, the surest way to strike it rich is to sell picks and shovels. That’s what Tien Tzuo is doing in this new subscription economy. His company, Zuora, is the engine that powers the subscription process for companies like Box, SurveyMonkey and TripAdvisor.   I talked to Tien Tzuo about how he founded Zuora, and grew it into a company that’s raised nearly a quarter of a billion dollars and is pushing for more growth. He’s got some unique ideas about managing people, and stepping out on your own.  

Justin Dent is the co-founder and executive director of GenFKD, a non-profit dedicated to getting Millennials smarter about their finances before it’s too late. He’s a Millennial himself – he graduated from the University of Maryland just a couple of years ago. Dent didn’t come from money, and neither did I – we’re both African Americans, though from different generations, who grew up on the East Coast and had to fight the odds to get into a better financial position.  With the tax changes that are wending their way through Congress and the questions about who they’ll help or hurt, it’s worth having a bit of an American family meeting, and thinking about just how we got into this sorry state, and how we get out. Dent is taking a bold step at a young age, toward doing exactly that.

About 13 years ago, Andy Jassy had a big, big idea. What if you could rent computing power and storage over the Internet instead of having to buy a whole bunch of computing equipment?   Jassy worked for Amazon.com at the time, as the technical assistant to one Jeff Bezos – the founder and CEO of Amazon. He told Jeff about the idea. They decided to do it. And now, more than a decade later, Andy Jassy has not only built a business that brings in 16 billion dollars a year. He and his team also essentially invented the business of cloud computing, and upended the tech world in the process.  I flew out to Las Vegas this week to have a chat with Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon Web Services. The company was having its annual re:Invent conference, where software programmers from around the world gather to hear the latest cloud tools Amazon is looking to put in their hands.   I wanted to hear from him about how he got started at Amazon; how he worked with his boss, Jeff Bezos, to launch a business that has turned out to

Growing up in the black community in Brooklyn and Washington, D.C. in the ‘70s and ‘80s, there were a few things you'd take for granted:  We learned Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing, also known as the Negro National Anthem, in school. We learned there was practically nothing George Washington Carver couldn’t do with a soybean. And a middle class black family was likely to have at least four magazines in the house: Ebony and Jet, of course. And if they were a little fancy, Essence and Black Enterprise.   These days, magazines aren’t what they used to be. Like many digital publishers, Black Enterprise is undergoing a reinvention, becoming less a publication and more a live events business. Back in October I interviewed Intel's CEO at a Black Enterprise tech event outside San Francisco – an event that showcased the brand's push to evolve beyond the printed page.   Earl Graves, Jr. -- he's known as "Butch" -- is the son of the founder of Black Enterprise. Now he's the CEO. I sat down with him to talk about how the brand

Katrina Lake is the founder and CEO of Stitch Fix. And as of today, at 34 years old, she is probably the youngest woman to take her company public – ever.   Stitch Fix is a San Francisco company that combines data-crunching computers with human stylists on a mission to send you the perfect outfit. On Friday the company went public on the Nasdaq stock market at a market value of more than $1 billion, and I was there for CNBC, covering the remarkable story.  Katrina Lake sat down with me at the Nasdaq in Times Square minutes after shares of Stitch Fix started trading for the first time – you can hear the buzz of Stitch Fix employees and customers in the background as we talk. The first part of our conversation was live on CNBC's Squawk Alley, which I co-anchor weekdays on the network. She took some time after that portion to talk more about how she developed the idea for the company, why she still works as a stylist on the platform, and why the story of how she overcame sexual harassment from an investor is esp

Hot technology companies tend to be based in Silicon Valley. They tend to be founded by eager undergrads or Harvard or Stanford business school alums. And these days, their leadership tends to lean strongly to the left politically.  Bandwidth is different.   Bandwidth is a business communication software company based in Raleigh, North Carolina. Co-founder and CEO David Morken served in the Marine Corps and went to law school. And he doesn't hide his Christian faith – while he says he also encourages his employees who have different belief systems to be authentic at work, too.  Bandwidth had its IPO on the Nasdaq on November 10, the day before Veterans Day and birthday of the Marine Corps. Morken timed it intentionally. The company is worth more than 300 million dollars, and Morken is determined to keep it independent and based in North Carolina. We talked about how the Marines prepared him to be an entrepreneur, why he believes student debt is a drag on the country's future, and how he handles today's divisi

It’s a familiar story in tech history: college friends stumble onto a big idea, drop out to pursue it, build a company, make mistakes, and eventually take that company public and make millions of dollars. That’s Apple, that’s Microsoft, that’s Facebook – and that’s Box.   Aaron Levie is the cofounder and CEO of Box, a company founded at the dawning of the cloud era. The basic idea: Wouldn’t it be great if we could store all kinds of digital files on the internet and teams could work on them at the same time, instead of emailing them around?  The answer is yes. That would be great. And Levie and his friends built a company now worth nearly $3 billion proving it.   The cloud thing seems obvious now, but when Levie was 20 years old and co-founded Box 12 years ago, it was far from it. I started covering him and the company in the early years of that journey, and I sat down with him days ago at the Nasdaq Marketsite in Times Square to catch up. At the wizened old age of 32, Aaron’s got a fresh take on advice he sh

When he was 14 years old growing up in West Philadelphia, Troy Carter started promoting parties at a neighbor's house and charging for entry. He did the DJing himself to save money.  Today he's one of the most respected visionaries at the intersection of two industries: Music and tech.   Carter wears a lot of hats. He's been a manager, working with the likes of John Legend, Lady Gaga and Meghan Trainor. He's an investor, a general partner at venture capital firm Cross Culture Ventures. And he's a connector. As global head of creator services at Spotify, he's ushering artists into the streaming age.  I met up with Troy Carter recently outside of San Francisco at the Black Enterprise Tech ConneXt Summit. We talked about his path from rags, to riches, to rags, and back again – and how a high school dropout learned to reinvent himself, and an industry. 

In case you haven't noticed, there are some big challenges facing the American worker. Unless you're in the top 20 percent salary-wise, if you've kept the same job, chances are you haven't gotten a big raise in the last decade or two.  The answer? There are arguments about whether a higher minimum wage would be a good fix, or a dramatic shift in tax policy. Rachel Carlson has a different idea.  Carlson is the co-founder and CEO of Guild Education, a startup that helps companies like Taco Bell to offer college tuition assistance as a benefit to their employees. Carlson has a unique blend of experiences – working in government, starting companies in Silicon Valley, and going to school on the other side of the tracks as a kid – that give her an intriguing perspective.   I sat down with Rachel Carlson to learn what's so hard about getting America's working class salaries rising again – and why the answers might be different than you think.  

Chamath Palihapitiya is one of the most sought-after investors in Silicon Valley. It's because he has a knack for figuring out how things work. At Facebook, he led the team that studied our online behavior and figured out how to grow that service from 50 million users when he joined in 2007, to 700 million users when he left four years later.    Now as the CEO of venture investing firm Social Capital, he's working on something different: cracking the code to understand how tech is changing our world – and maybe make a few billion dollars in the process. It's quite a journey for Palihapitiya. He grew up poor, an immigrant from Sri Lanka, with a knack for numbers, a talent for gambling, and the proverbial deck stacked against him.   I visited Chamath at Social Capital's offices in Palo Alto, California to get an up-close look at how he thinks. One of his deepest insights? Getting the right answer is overrated. Real growth happens from examining our wrong answers.